One for the theists..

Would you still worship god if there was no hell?

  • Total voters
    14
lightgigantic said:
mind virus?


The idea that "God" and "Faith" are viruses of the mind has provoked some hostile criticism, including John Bowker's 1992-3 Gresham College lectures,[1] in which he suggests that Dawkins' "account of religious motivation ... is ... far removed from evidence and data" and that, even if the God-meme approach were valid, "it does not give rise to one set of consequences ... Out of the many behaviours it produces, why are we required to isolate only those that might be regarded as diseased?"

Alister McGrath, a Christian theologian, has also commented critically on Dawkins' analysis, suggesting that "memes have no place in serious scientific reflection",[2] that there is strong evidence that such ideas are not spread by random processes, but by deliberate intentional actions[3] that "evolution" of ideas is more Lamarckian than Darwinian,[4] and that there is no evidence (and certainly none in the essay) that epidemiological models usefully explain the spread of religious ideas.[5] McGrath also cites a metareview of 100 studies and argues that "If religion is reported as having a positive effect on human well-being by 79% of recent studies in the field, how can it conceivably be regarded as analogous to a virus?"[6]

Physician heal thyself
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Ummm, Wars? Killings? Bombings? All because of a belief.
 
lightgigantic said:
great - now what are you using as a control group for your observations?
;)
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Al-qaeda, the crusades, those christians who bombed an abbortion clinic, (just a few examples) just read the news and you will see right away what I am talking about. ;)
 
sandy said:
The Bible says: Heaven is for God's kids. Hell is for satan's. Those who have never heard will not go to hell. But He will not come back until everyone has heard. Being good does not get you into Heaven. Being a child of God does.
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So, according to you, someone could be one of the greatest people on earth, yet hold a different faith (or athiest/agnostic), and still go to hell.
What about any child from a developing country, who does not believe in God, what would happen to them should they die?

satan exists whether you believe in him or not. He is the great deceiver and it looks like he did a GREAT job deceiving you. :(
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Perhaps you should be a little more tolerant of others' beliefs.
 
USS Exeter said:
Al-qaeda, the crusades, those christians who bombed an abbortion clinic, (just a few examples) just read the news and you will see right away what I am talking about. ;)
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yes that's fine
I asked what you were using as a control group

A scientific control augments integrity in experiments by isolating variables as dictated by the scientific method in order to make a conclusion about such variables. In a controlled experiment, two virtually identical experiments are conducted. In one of them, the treatment, the factor being tested is applied. In the other, the control, the factor being tested is not applied. For example, in testing a drug, it is important to carefully verify that the supposed effects of the drug are produced only by the drug itself. Doctors achieve this with a double-blind study in a clinical trial: two (statistically) identical groups of patients are compared, one of which receives the drug and one of which receives a placebo. Neither the patients nor the doctor know which group receives the real drug, which serves both to curb researchers' bias and to isolate the effects of the drug.

needless to say, there are very good reasons why psychology is a "soft science"
 
lightgigantic said:
yes that's fine
I asked what you were using as a control group

A scientific control augments integrity in experiments by isolating variables as dictated by the scientific method in order to make a conclusion about such variables. In a controlled experiment, two virtually identical experiments are conducted. In one of them, the treatment, the factor being tested is applied. In the other, the control, the factor being tested is not applied. For example, in testing a drug, it is important to carefully verify that the supposed effects of the drug are produced only by the drug itself. Doctors achieve this with a double-blind study in a clinical trial: two (statistically) identical groups of patients are compared, one of which receives the drug and one of which receives a placebo. Neither the patients nor the doctor know which group receives the real drug, which serves both to curb researchers' bias and to isolate the effects of the drug.

needless to say, there are very good reasons why psychology is a "soft science"
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Oh sorry I didn't notice it completely, but no, I have no scientific control group, yet.
 
lightgigantic said:
maybe you should work on that before you start advocating panaceas for "mind viruses"
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What I meant by "mind virus" was not the definition you gave me, I should have worded that differently, I was only using a figure of speach. What I meant to say is that religion has manifested itself into people's minds to make (some) do extreme things in the name of their belief. That's all.
 
USS Exeter said:
What I meant by "mind virus" was not the definition you gave me, I should have worded that differently, I was only using a figure of speach. What I meant to say is that religion has manifested itself into people's minds to make (some) do extreme things in the name of their belief. That's all.
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"Mind virus" is coined by the big daddy-o dawkins

you may not realize it, but your argument (even the re-adjusted one you're offering now) is a simplified version of his .....
.... thus standard arguments tend to draw the attention of standard rebuttals

All you can say, without falling into the red is ...
"Religion makes some people do some extreme things some of the time"

going from there to a coherent argument for the dismissal of all religion requires a bit more ground work - eg - control groups
 
lightgigantic said:
"Mind virus" is coined by the big daddy-o dawkins
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Sorry not coined, only brought to the fore.
Memes have been around for as long as men have spoken.

The Mind Virus
Ideas behaving in society like viruses in the body
An essay in hypertext by Scott Bidstrup

"The voice which I heard out of the sky, I heard it again speaking to me, saying: Go, take the open book-roll in the hand of the angel who stands upon the sea and the land. I went toward the angel, bidding him to give me the book. And he said to me: Take it and eat it, and it will make your stomach bitter, but in your mouth, it will be sweet as honey. And I took the book from the hand of the angel and ate it, and in my mouth it was like sweet honey; and when I had eaten it, my stomach was bitter"
--Revelation 10:9-10 Richmond Lattimore Translation

translation of the Book of Revelation in the New Testament, is an excellent analogy to the effects that a major meme complex can have on the soul.

What is a meme? A meme is an idea that behaves in society like a virus does in a body. They're all around us. Political or sexual jokes, for example, can behave like memes, they start with one person, are retold time and again, and end up travelling around the world, as they're told and retold, and in so doing, they behave like viruses.
http://www.bidstrup.com/virus.htm
 
geeser said:
Sorry not coined, only brought to the fore.
Memes have been around for as long as men have spoken.
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my point was that arguments, like the one you referenced, are love children of dawkins

hence standard rebuttals of dawkins have standard implications for his love children

(erm ..... mental virus? Control group? who? what? where?)
 
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